Living with a So-Called Time Traveler
by NorahB
Summary: Set in the immediate aftermath of the Season 2 finale. What happens when you find out that your husband, your lover, your baby mama, your friend, or your son is a time traveler? Do you really believe it? Do you feel like a minor character in a quirky sci-fi movie? And what do you do now?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:**

Obviously, I own nothing.

 ** _Spoilers, seasons 1-2._**

 **A/N:**

I couldn't wait a year to find out what happens after the end of Season 2. This story picks up just as the Season 2 finale is ending. Our team has climbed out of the helicopter, coming to rescue their loved ones. All of whom seem afraid of them, and may believe them to be time travelers and/or terrorists. I wanted to explore what happens after you find out something like that. Do you believe it? Can you trust this person? Canon through the finale of Season 2. I'm not expecting to introduce any major new plot. This is a character piece, examining the impact of the truth on the team's relationships. It begins with David's point of view, but subsequent chapters will explore the points of view of other characters, both travelers and non-travelers. I'm expecting to complete this story in 5-10 short chapters.

"We can get past this," Marcy was saying to David. Or maybe it wasn't really Marcy talking – maybe it was some ... thing. If he could believe in science fiction, that time travel was real, that the Marcy he'd found on the streets was gone, that her consciousness had been overwritten by this ... thing, or well, he supposed he should call it a person. But that was crazy. David wasn't living in a world where ... He was not a minor character in some quirky science fiction movie, kept around for comic relief. No, there must be a reasonable explanation.

But what if?

"I don't think we can," David said, backing away from her.

"You killed my husband!" Katherine shrieked at Agent MacLaren, as Carly and the angry cop began arguing over who was allowed to hold the baby, as the high school kid ran over to his guidance counselor (possible fellow time traveler), and David heard Ray tell Phillip that he'd been straight with him from the beginning, but they weren't friends. Weirdly, Phillip had told Ray that he was a time traveler, but the sketchy court-appointed lawyer hadn't believed him. Of all the things that had happened today, Ray's disbelief made the most sense of anything.

"What do you think is happening, David?" Marcy asked.

He shook his head, unable or unwilling to mull it out any more, unable to think hard enough to give her a definitive answer.

"Can I have everyone's attention?" MacLaren yelled.

The authority and urgency of voice made David and everyone else turn to the FBI agent, stop talking or yelling, and listen raptly as he spoke.

"I'd like to set the record straight," MacLaren told them, his voice level and calm, but no less urgent. "There is no such thing as time travel. You were all kidnapped. Your lives were in danger. My team gave the kidnappers what they wanted, told them what they wanted to hear, so that our loved ones would be released."

Jeff laughed, then pulled the baby closer to him just as Carly was reaching out towards her son once again. Was the baby really her son? This was getting confusing. "Are you really expecting us to believe that?"

"When the alternative is that time travel is real?" MacLaren said, his voice deadpan.

"And one of your team is a high school kid?" Jeff barked. "Since when does the FBI have a work-study program? And what's Carly got to do with the FBI?"

MacLaren glared hard at Jeff and sighed. "They are specialists. And any more information about my team and its activities is _classified_." He paused, raising his eyebrows at the angry cop, as if daring him to interrupt again. When no more interruptions came, the agent continued. "We played along with their truly, truly bizarre conspiracy theory. However, we were unable to stop the video footage from getting out into the world. So, your lives are about to become ... odd. Some of you may be questioned by the authorities. You may even be in the news. I would expect a media frenzy, especially coming from the tabloids. _The New York Times_ might not take this seriously, because they are reasonable people. But _The_ _National Enquirer_? Regardless, if we could all get on the same page, I'm sure it'll die down soon."

He paused, glancing from person to person, seeming like a teacher giving a lecture before an important test. "Nobody killed anybody's husband," MacLaren said. "Carly should be permitted to hold her child. Marcy is going to give David some medical attention. And we are all going to cooperate with whomever is coming in that entourage of siren-ed vehicles." He took a breath. "There is no such thing as time travel. Do I make myself clear?"

David nodded. He was almost convinced. He allowed Marcy to open her medical kit and begin cleaning off his bloodied face, wiping away dried blood, from where the kidnappers had beaten him. They'd been hoping to send a message to Marcy. Their message had clearly worked, because she'd made that super terrifying, super weird video, in which she claimed to be a time traveler.

"I was so scared," she said softly. He was about to reply, but MacLaren's wife began talking again. Fast.

"What's your mother's maiden name?" she asked her husband.

He frowned before answering, "O'Keefe."

Katherine took a deep shaky breath, relief coursing over her features. But then she steeled herself again. "Where did you grow up?"

"Pittsburg. Honey, what are you trying to prove?"

"That would be in public records."

"Are we back to me being a time traveler from the future?"

"Who was the best man at our wedding?"

MacLaren paused for just a second before he said, "Walt."

"Where did you take me on our first date?"

MacLaren froze. He looked like he was racking his brain. "It was that restaurant, you know the one," he finally muttered.

Katherine's face fell.

"It was a seafood place," MacLaren said. "It's not there anymore, but you liked the crab cakes, and I had salmon, but I complained that it was the only thing that was called steak on the menu, even though it wasn't an actual steak."

Katherine frowned, saying, "That was our third date."

"Hey, he's pretty close," David said, relieved out of his mind. Turning towards Katherine, he asked her, "How would a time traveler know that? People don't generally put their hang-ups about seafood menus on a public record."

"Grant, or 34 whatever you are, what was our first date?" she said, voice icy cold.

Agent MacLaren smiled a charming smile and said, "Honey, I really thought that was it."

"It was on our first date that you stopped calling me Katherine. Remember?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

"I don't know, Katherine was to call you, when I fell in love with so fast," MacLaren said, voice rising in pitch, and in nervousness.

"No specific reason?"

"Kat, we've been married ten years, do you remember every second of it?"

She laughed bitterly as she told him, "I remember that you took me to the top of the Space Needle on our first date, because I was new to town and I told you that I'd never been, that I wished I could be a tourist in Seattle for just one day. And then when we got to the top, you had a moment of fear, the height just got to you, and I grabbed onto your hand. You said I was like a cat, comfortable way up high, and steady on my feet. And it was always Kat, after that afternoon way up in the sky."

MacLaren just nodded, not saying anything.

"But that wasn't you, was it?" Katherine snapped. Her face turned ugly. MacLaren's wife was still beautiful, of course, but her expression – so filled with hatred and repulsion – it made her look ugly.

"Of course it was," her husband/possibly-not-husband told her.

The sirens were getting closer.

"All's I know is that my Carly wouldn't have almost killed me the other night," Jeff was saying as he bounced the baby up and down, trying to stop it from crying.

"You were drunk and you struck me. Again!" Carly shouted.

"What?" MacLaren whipped around to glare at Jeff. "You have got to be the stupidest person on the face of the planet. How hard is it to not hit women?"

"Who _are_ you?" Katherine shrieked at her husband.

"Even I don't hit women," Ray remarked in an offhand way to Phillip.

"How are you so calm?" Phillip asked his sort-of friend. It was seriously sad that this college-aged kid didn't have any other friends.

Ray shrugged.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Trevor asked Grace, who had this oddly blank look on her face. And why didn't the high school kid have any friends besides his guidance counselor?

Marcy pulled David back towards her and continued cleaning his wounds. "I'm just so glad they didn't do any permanent damage," she was saying.

"So, I'm not going to need plastic surgery?" he quipped.

She laughed. "I know you have a million questions. I'm just so glad you're okay. And I'm just so sorry. To put you in this kind of danger."

"You hit her one more time and you'll have me to answer to!" MacLaren was yelling at Jeff.

"She's the one you were sleeping with, isn't she?" Katherine was shrieking. "God, Grant! She's half your age."

David smiled at Marcy, a sad but sincere smile. The sirens were almost upon them. He grabbed her hands. "I get that you put yourself in even more danger, making that video. I get that you've saved my life at least twice now."

"I don't know what's about to happen," Marcy whispered, "but I promise –"

MacLaren's voice was getting louder and less reasonable. "I think we need to return to the problem here, which is that this young woman has repeatedly been abused by this fucking asshole."

"Why do you care?" Katherine hissed.

"Why don't you?" he snapped back at her.

"Mac, just settle down," Carly said, sounding bitter but resolved. "I can handle myself."

"But that's just the thing," Jeff said, his voice remarkably even now. "You shouldn't be able to. I mean, Mrs. MacLaren, you got to understand. Carly never had fighting skills like that, not before. Not my Carly. The real Carly."

"Are you seriously saying that you're pissed that when you abuse your child's mother, she fights back?" MacLaren asked, incredulous. "Kat, are you listening to this?"

"I'm not saying I approve of him beating her up," Katherine said with a sigh. "Of course I don't!"

"So that's my problem," MacLaren was telling his wife. "I'd just prefer it if one of my team, who it's my job to look out for, isn't getting hit by her deadbeat boyfriend."

None of these so-called time travelers sounded evil.

Jeff sounded a little evil, but no one was claiming that he was a time traveling terrorist. And frankly he didn't seem smart enough. Marcy, on the other hand was very smart.

As the first police car rounded the bend and pulled up in front of them, David came to a snap judgment. "I've got your back, Marce," he whispered. "We can pow wow later about exactly what the truth is. For right now, I'll follow your lead. If you say the kidnappers made it all up, fine. Because that makes more sense anyway. I mean, time travelers? Like we're in a sci-fi show? I am definitely not living in that genre."

She kissed his bruised cheek, her touch ever so gentle, ever so light.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:**

 _It looks like when I tried to post chapter 2, I accidentally posted chapter 1 again, so that both chapters were exactly the same, and there was no new content. Oops! Sorry about that! So let's try this again, and I'm now posting the actual second chapter. :)  
_

 _-Norah_

 **MacLaren**

MacLaren was still arguing with his wife as they walked through the door of her apartment. The place was just as he'd left it earlier today. It looked so ridiculously normal.

###

Luckily the entourage of siren-ed vehicles had been FBI backup – to assist him with the hostage rescue. Even better, a few of the agents and medics milling around were also Travelers. For now, the Bureau wasn't buying into the whole time-travel idea, partly because every Traveler in the government had been on damage control all day.

And partly because, as Mac had hoped, 21st century skepticism was prevailing. The twenty-firsters didn't believe in time travel, and so most FBI agents Mac ran into that afternoon assumed that his video confession was nothing more than a bunch of lies, made up so he could get his wife back from those crazy kidnappers.

The twenty-firsters did believe in FBI rules and regulations. Apparently, there was a whole list of shit MacLaren had done, in less than 24 hours, that _just wasn't done_. Nobody was super pleased that MacLaren had gone rogue, once again, and there was a lot of muttering about the million ways he could have approached this situation differently. And then there were raised voices, hands flung in the air to signal exasperation. His whole team, and all five hostages, had been questioned.

There was a good deal of anger about him flying a helicopter without a license. And confusion about how he'd gotten the helicopter in the first place. Some lecturing about paperwork that needed to be filled out for, well, just about every minute of the day. There was shock that he and his motley assortment of unregistered C.I.'s would dare record any kind of video without first getting approval from the section chief. There was general dismay, and some serious freaking out, because he'd recruited Trevor to be a confidential informant, when he was still in high school. There was a long discussion about whether to call Trevor's parents, and what to say, but then the "teen" in question came over, spoke in his deep, rumbly, incredibly calm voice, and explained that he'd turned 18 last week, so he was of age and nobody needed to call his parents. There was a collective sigh of relief, but more muttering about what to do if Trevor's "parents" decided to make a fuss, or child protective services intervened.

Therefore, Mac was far from the most popular FBI agent today. But he and his team had been permitted to go home. Who knows what was happening in the rest of the world, but, at least for now, in the Seattle field office, 21st century skepticism was prevailing.

Instead of being handcuffed to a chair in some shady government lockup, he was following Protocol 5, resuming his host's normal. And trying like hell to convince Grant MacLaren's wife that he was the real Grant MacLaren.

###

"What's my favorite flower?" Kat asked as she stepped inside the apartment.

"Daffodils," he said, shutting the door behind him.

"Dammit. You're right on that one. Oh, this is a good one. What college course did you fail?"

"I didn't fail any!"

"Ha!" she yelled, triumphant. "Calculus. You had to take it twice."

"That's not true."

"It is."

"Do you want me to get my transcripts?"

"It's not on your transcripts. You, or the real Grant, if you're not him ... managed to get it wiped, because your father was friends with the dean."

"You didn't even know me in college. We met when I was 32," MacLaren said, his patience wearing thin. He was exhausted by her questioning, her unrelenting desire to catch him in a lie. He was also worried about Carly, and the volcano that was Jeff. Drawing on research he'd done on his host's life, and the few memories of the real Grant MacLaren he'd relived when he almost died in the plane crash, he had been answering as many of her questions as he could. Now he said, "Walt's wife introduced us. At a barbeque. And, of course I remember that Space Needle date. I'm just tired, honey. I'm just really, really tired. I thought I might never see you again. Can you imagine that?"

She looked at him, really looked at him, and her face showed a twinge of sympathy as she said, "Yes. I can. How do you think I feel when you disappear from the grid? When your own partner doesn't know where you are?"

MacLaren walked over to the fridge and began rummaging around for something they could eat. He began heating up a butternut squash soup for himself as he assembled a ham sandwich for his wife. Well, she was basically his wife. He tried not to flinch as his hands touched the ham. He didn't like the wet, meaty texture on his fingers. When he was finished, he brought the sandwich over to the table, placed it in her spot, and said, "You need to eat. You'll feel better."

She stood by the door, shaking her head as if she wanted to tell him that she refused to eat with him. Her eyes a little crazy, her face white. "Please, just admit it," she snapped. "I'll feel better if you just admit it."

"You'll feel better if you eat. Your blood sugar is probably dangerously low. Please. Sit with me. I'm not some dangerous monster. I'm just ... I love you, Kat," he said, smiling, trying to play a part that, until today, had become so normal that it wasn't a part. He'd begun to feel like he was the real Grant MacLaren.

After a long, terrible pause, she sat in her usual seat, pushing her dark hair behind her ears as she began to eat. He got his soup off the stove and into a bowl, which he brought to the table. Sitting across from his wife, he began to spoon the rich, golden goodness into his mouth. It was sublime. Nothing like it in the future.

"The vegan diet!" Kat almost squealed.

He looked up. She had taken a couple bites of her sandwich, but now she was holding the bread and meat in front of her, staring raptly from her ham to his soup and back again. "Pardon?"

"I'd just assumed it had to do with the woman you'd met. That she was a hippie, or something."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Kat!"

"But maybe... in the future you're a vegan. But why would you be a vegan? None of this makes any sense. I suppose I could be going crazy. Maybe you really do have a reasonable explanation for all of this. God knows what it is. But it could exist. Because ... time travelers? Is that a thing? It can't be an actual thing."

MacLaren sighed, telling her for what seemed like the hundredth time, "They kidnapped you, Kat. Who knows what goes through crazy people's heads? The FBI doesn't pay to get hostages back, but they weren't asking for payment. They just wanted us to make these goddamned, stupid videos. It was something I could do."

She laughed humorlessly as she shook her head. Emphatically. "Explain the diet."

MacLaren began losing his patience. He glared at her ham sandwich, remembering the feeling of the cooked, processed meat on his fingers. "What doesn't make sense is that you, an otherwise caring woman, don't care about the pig who died, so you could eat it? Also, do you realize the conditions it had to live in?" The conditions, which he'd read about, reminded him of the shelters, in a vague way, except that none of his people had been eaten, and their lives had been a bit better. The Director was humane, after all.

"Your father would remember about the Calculus class," Kat said, her face going strange, all of a sudden. She sort of smiled, but looked like she was about to pass out, or throw up.

"Huh," was all he could say. He spooned the soup into his mouth rapidly, trying to increase his pleasure endorphins.

"You should call him up," she said.

"I just might. I'm sure he'll back me up," he murmured, and he was about to take another mouthful of the goldeny goodness when Kat just lost it. She fell apart. "Oh, honey, what's wrong?"

She was shaking so hard she couldn't speak. He reached across the table, trying to grab hold of her hand, but she yanked her hand away, out of his reach. He just stared, numb inside, until she muttered, "Your father ... Grant's father ... had a stroke last year. He's in a nursing home, can't really communicate, can't even feed himself. He hasn't spoken in a year." Her face was white, her eyes wide and scared. Her anger had turned into fear.

MacLaren stared helplessly at his wife, knowing that he'd lost the battle. He couldn't come back from this one. If he didn't tell her the truth right now, he'd certainly lose her. And though he did love her, the real problem with losing her trust was that she could pose a huge problem to his cover.

Finally, he said, "I do love you, Kat. More than I thought possible."

She started crying as she said, "But you're not him."

"No."

"You killed him?"

"No."

"Then I don't understand."

"Grant MacLaren died. In another timeline, one where I didn't leap into his body, he died. He was chasing a criminal through an abandoned building. There was a power outage. There was confusion. He fell down an elevator. I came into his body about thirty seconds before he would have died. We stopped the accident from happening."

Katherine's eyes widened. "A power outage?"

He nodded.

"I remember that night. That was you in the morning, not him? You had slept on the couch. You said you didn't want to wake me. And then you thought the milk in your coffee was off."

He nodded.

"This doesn't make any sense. ... Is he coming back?" she asked, her voice timid and hopeful at the same time, as if she was desperate for an affirmative answer. But at the same time, she didn't want to let herself hope.

MacLaren shook his head, not sure if he should say anything more, waiting for her to yell or cry, or maybe do both. But Katherine had gone emotionless. Her face was pale. She placed her sandwich down on the plate in front of her. Then she was still. Very still. After the silence became too much for him, he muttered, "I'm sorry, Kat. I really am."

"Sorry?" she asked, voice suspiciously quiet, even. "For killing him?"

"I didn't kill him."

"You took over his body."

"Seconds before he would have died. You would be a widow, now. If I hadn't come."

She let out a long, shuddery sigh before saying, "I am a widow."

"Kat," he murmured, pleading with her to understand.

She glared at him. "Don't you get it? You didn't save his life. You stole it. And you're living, oh god, inside his skin. Inside his bones. Inside his eyes." She looked like she was about to faint or be sick, or both.

"It's going to be okay," he told her, voice soft and urgent at the same time. He looked into her dark eyes, willing her to trust him.

"Don't you realize it would have been better if he'd died?"

He shook his head. He'd never thought of that, not like that. Because this mission was, and had always been, bigger than him, or Grant MacLaren, or Kat.

"Instead of an imposter living in my house, having sex with me. Oh god, we had sex! We made a baby, and then we lost it. I thought that was my husband. But it was ... some stranger. Jesus Christ, Grant." And then she started laughing, humorlessly, almost hysterically. "But that's not your name."

He sighed, and breathed in and out several times, as Trevor taught him. Control the breath: control the body. Now Mac said, "You're missing the point. Because I came into this body, countless lives have been saved. And I can't give you all the details. I just can't, and I won't. But Kat, this is for the greater good. This is not for some creepy anything. ... This work – when I was accepted into the Traveler program, it was an honor. You can't understand, but this means something. Every day in this century is an honor. I'm sorry about, well, everything that's happened that's hurt you. But this is important work. I'm needed here. ... So, no, it wouldn't have been better if he'd died. "

She went back to eating her sandwich. She chewed slowly, as if trying to make his heart hurt by savoring the pig meat. After a few bites, she put the sandwich down again, murmuring, "I really thought this vegan thing was about that woman you met. But now I'm thinking it has something to do with this future you're supposed to come from."

He sighed, wondering how much to share, what he could say without endangering the mission and the Protocols. "In the future I come from," he said cautiously, "we've stopped eating food sourced from animals."

"You're too evolved for that?"

He laughed. "From an early age, we're taught that it's wrong. But mostly, it's about resources. We don't have the resources to have, well, just about anything."

Kat frowned. "You said you came from a future where humanity was all but wiped out?" When he nodded, she continued. "How bad does it get?"

He stirred his soup absently as he tried to think of a way to answer her question. He'd never had to explain his world to anyone before. Finally, he said, "There's obviously no room for animals to graze. But it's more than that. I'd never had a squash before I came here. Never had a fruit or a vegetable. Just this gruel we ate, all the time. It had all the vitamins and nutrients we needed, though everyone was always thin, always hungry. Never enough calories. And no taste in the food. Recycled water. Recycled air. No sunlight. Honey, I don't want to scare you, but it's bad."

Kat's eyes had grown wide. She reached out and tentatively touched his hand. "Grant," she whispered. "What do you mean about no sunlight?"

He barked out a short laugh. Her fingers were light on his wrist, and it took everything that was in him to not overreact and grab her hand, or kiss her. "I grew up in a dome, under the ice. Never went outside, until I came here. Never felt the sun on my back. Never saw an animal. Birds – they're a revelation. Honestly, it's all a revelation. And you, of course."

She looked him straight in the eyes, as if seeing him as a real, distinct person for the first time, separate from her husband. "What's your real name?"

"Grant is fine."

Her eyes hardened. "That was _his_ name. I want to know who you are."

"3468. The future doesn't see the utility in names. Numbers make for clearer records. I like Grant better than my number. I enjoy people calling me Mac, which was a surprise. I've never understood why people in the 21st like to shorten names, but it's kind of fun, at the same time."

Kat's eyes widened. "You don't have a real name?"

MacLaren felt a pang of sadness as he shook his head. "No one has had traditional names like Grant or Katherine for generations, not in the time I come from. I have a Traveler number, and before that a shelter number, assigned at my birth. My mother told me that her grandparents had names. She whispered them to me once."

"That is so sad," Kat murmured.

Suddenly a voice yelled out, inside his head, on his comm. "Mac? Are you there?" It was Carly, and she sounded desperate.

"Give me a moment," he said to Kat. Getting up, he walked over to her side of the table, and placed a quick kiss on her head, before she could move away. He hurried into the bedroom and closed the door.

###

"Carly?" he said when he was free of his wife.

"Mac, I need you. Jeff won't let me inside."

"What do you want me to do about it? He's not going to listen to me. And he might call the cops, or the news."

"I know."

"Honey, what do you need?"

"You."

He stopped short. He'd been walking in circles around the bedroom. And now he was standing in one place, thinking of Carly. Well, no, he wasn't thinking of Carly. He was thinking of 3465, of her short blond hair, the number tattooed onto the back of her neck, of her lithe, lean body, and her plucky, impossible spirit, and the way she could make him absolutely shatter during sex. Katherine had nothing on 3465. He'd been so focused on getting his relationship with his "wife" fixed and strengthened, he'd forgotten that there had been someone else, someone who had come first. Their relationship had happened in the future, of course, but even so, that relationship had lasted almost a decade before he'd ever met Katherine. If marriage had existed in their time, in the domes, they would have been married, right?

He'd almost forgotten that Carly could need something, least of all him. And right now, she seemed to be breaking.

"I can't leave Kat right now," he said softly. "I'm on the verge of getting her to not hate me. I had to come clean a few minutes ago. She's still angry, but she seems to feel pity for me. Because of the life I left in the future. I've been telling her about the future."

Carly laughed. "Is she terrified?"

"I don't know. I don't know how much she believes."

"Do you think she'll cooperate?"

"I don't know."

A sound of a throat clearing behind him. MacLaren swung around to face the doorway. His wife stood there, looking half angry, half amused. "Who are you talking to, Grant?" Katherine asked.

"No one."

"Oh? Just going crazy now? Should we add that to our list of problems?"

He sighed, knowing that it would be better for it to be Trevor or Philip, but also knowing that lying would just lead to more troubles, would degrade her almost nonexistent trust. "Carly's been locked out of her home. Her ... Jeff won't let her in. And won't let her see the baby. Just trying to help one of my team sort out a problem."

Kat frowned. He was expecting the frown to turn into something nasty, expecting his wife to yell about the affair she suspected he was having with Carly. But then Katherine's face softened, and once again he saw pity, even compassion, in her face. "Jeff scared me today," Kat said softly. "Is she okay?"

MacLaren cursed under his breath. He hadn't thought to ask. She hadn't sounded ... unsafe. She seemed angry, but not afraid. And, of course, Carly could more than take care of herself. But still. He hadn't asked. "Are you okay, Carly?"

"How are you doing that?" Kat snapped.

He held his hand up, making it clear that Kat needed to wait, as he listened for Carly's reply. "I'm fine," she told him through the comm.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"I'll just go to the warehouse. I can stay with Philip. It's good just to hear your voice, and you should work on getting her to like you. She could cause us a hell of a lot of trouble."

Mac smiled to himself, as he told Kat, "She's fine. She's just shaken up. Headed to Philip."

Kat was shaking her head. "No. I want to talk to her."

MacLaren raised his brows, saying, "Oh, I don't think that's a great idea. She's fine. You're fine. We're all fine."

"You were screwing her, weren't you?" Kat asked, her voice remarkably even. She didn't sound angry. She just sounded like she wanted to know the answer to her question.

MacLaren sighed and said nothing.

Carly began laughing. As if this was genuinely funny. After a long minute of this completely ill-timed merriment, Carly muttered, "Shouldn't I be upset that you've been screwing her?"

"Can everyone just settle down?" Mac asked.

"Seriously," Kat wanted to know. "How are you talking to her? I don't see a blue-tooth piece or anything."

He sighed. "It's implanted in my ear."

Kat's eyes widened. "Do you mean that someone is listening in all the time, to everything we say to each other?"

He shook his head. "No!" Mac told Kat firmly. "Nothing like that. I have to activate it. It's just like a phone."

"Except inside your body," Kat said.

"There's that." He smiled at his wife, wondering if he should hang up on Carly or go look for Carly. "Other than that, it's totally normal."

"Anyway," Katherine said, "I want to meet her."

He sighed. "You've met."

"Properly. I want to meet her properly." Kat's eyes were like steel now.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N**

Thank you so, so much to everyone who's been reading, following, and/or favoriting this story. It's a small fandom, so it's been cool to see the response to this little story. I especially want to thank everyone who's left a review. Shoutouts to ColorlessRainbow42, Jacob Denness, geoavenger, diggerboy4, and various guests :)

I know it's been a long time since I've posted an update, but here is the next chapter. I have another one almost ready to go, so look out for that in the next couple weeks. I'm planning to finish this up with about ten chapters total, and I definitely plan to finish it.

Cheers, and happy Saturday!

-Norah

 **Chapter 3**

 **Gary**

Gary Holden was pacing around the living room, waiting for his son to come home. His wife had been in the kitchen for hours, making lasagna, Trevor's favorite. It had been his son's favorite since he was a little boy, and so of course it must still be his favorite. And of course what people were saying had to be wrong, what Trevor himself had said on video, it had to be wrong. Nobody jumped in and out of bodies. Nobody's mind traveled ... anywhere. It was stupid. A stupid prank. And Trevor was absolutely, without a doubt grounded. But Gary did not believe in crazy, weirdo theories. So everybody should just calm down.

Patricia hadn't said a word all afternoon, not since they'd started getting phone calls from friends and family. She'd just been making the lasagna, taking extra care with every chopped tomato, every single step of the recipe. She'd turned on music in the kitchen, the Beatles, much louder than she'd ever done before, as if she thought that John Lennon and Paul McCartney's voices might drown out her worry and her doubt.

If Trevor would just come home, or answer his damned cell phone, all of this could be sorted out. There had to be a logical explanation for his truly bizarre behavior, for that video he'd made.

A knock at the door startled Gary from his pacing.

Patricia dashed into the living room. "Trevor wouldn't knock," she said.

He nodded, agreeing with her. "Let's hope the idiot press hasn't gotten involved," he muttered, as he walked to the door. So far, Trevor's name hadn't been released, so they hadn't had any calls from newspapers or television people. But they'd had plenty of calls. His brother in Oregon. Teachers. Nosy neighbors. Patricia's old college roommate. They'd told all these busybodies the same thing—Trevor was the same person he'd always been.

On the other side of their front door stood Trevor's girlfriend, Rene, a slender, very pretty, dark-haired girl, who looked like she might throw up any second. "Is he here?" she asked.

Gary shook his head, but stepped aside to let the girl in. "He's not answering his cell phone," he told her. "But I'm sure he'll be home soon."

Patricia drew the girl into a hug. "You poor thing. You look like you've seen a ghost. It's not true, of course. Some practical joke. Though why that FBI agent is playing along, I can't tell you, because he looks entirely too old for practical jokes. But I'm making lasagna. You'll stay for dinner. Trevor will show up, and everything will be fine. After Gary has yelled at him."

Rene nodded and smiled. Or she attempted to smile. "Do you think he's okay?" she asked. "I mean, what could he be mixed up in that he'd do something like this?"

Patricia just clucked and shook her head before retreating to the kitchen.

"He's got hell to pay," Gary said to Rene, and himself. "That's for sure. He hasn't seen trouble if he hasn't seen my face today. But he's fine. We'd have ... I mean somebody would've called us ... he's fine."

They settled into an uneasy silence, as Gary resumed pacing and Rene pulled her cell phone out of her hand bag and began typing furiously on the touch screen. He was wondering if he should turn on the TV to distract himself, and if it would be worth the risk that his son's picture would show up on the screen – when he heard the sound of a key turning the lock on the front door. And then Trevor was walking inside.

His son walked in the door. His expression was calm, so calm that it betrayed no emotions. He came in slowly but deliberately, nodding at both Gary and Rene, kicking the door closed behind him. "Aren't you supposed to be in college?" he asked Rene.

"She goes to college?" Gary asked.

Trevor nodded. "Just started. At Whitman. Which is in a town called Walla Walla. Isn't that a wonderful name for a town?"

Gary just stared at this kid, dumbfounded. Why was he talking about Walla Walla?

"Do you have any idea what your mother and I have been going through?" he was asking. "You are –" but he was cut off when Patricia ran out from the kitchen, throwing her arms around her only child.

"It's okay, Mom," Trevor said, letting himself be hugged for a whole minute before gently pulling himself away. "I take it you've seen the video?"

Gary grabbed Trevor roughly by the arm and sat him down on the couch, hard. "This is no laughing matter."

"Who's laughing?" Trevor asked, glowering at Gary.

"Where have you been?" Patricia asked.

Rene sat down beside Trevor and patted his knee, encouragingly, as she said, "We just want to know what's going on? This is a little weird."

"A little?" Gary snapped.

Trevor locked eyes with him and then nodded, almost imperceptibly, as if he was agreeing to cooperate, or agreeing that he needed to take this seriously. After a long while, he said, "I was getting questioned by the FBI. Now, everybody just take a breath, because this is going to be fine. Obviously what I said on the video was a lie. These people, they'd taken hostages. We were trying to get them back. And we did. We thought we could stop the videos from getting released. That part of the plan didn't work."

Gary felt like this anger inside his body might just bubble to the surface, and maybe even set the whole house on fire. "Since when does anything you do involve the FBI?"

Trevor tapped his fingers together, seeming like he was considering his answer. Finally he said, "There was this hacking thing. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal. But the FBI was tracking the chatter in chat rooms, on the internet. Agent MacLaren got involved."

Patricia gasped. "He came by the house! I remember him now."

Trevor nodded. "So anyway, he offered me and my friend Philip a deal. We took it. We didn't want to have our whole lives screwed up."

"But you're a minor! Or you were until a week ago!" Patricia shrieked. "He's not allowed to do that without talking to us."

Trevor shrugged. "Well, I guess there's special rules because I was able to help on some cases that pertain to national security."

Gary raised his eyebrows. "What exactly could you do that would have anything to do with national security. Last I checked, the main thing you did on the computer was look up internet porn."

Trevor shrugged again. "Can't answer that, Gary."

"And that's another thing – " he was saying.

But Patricia held up a hand and interrupted him. "We need to speak to this Agent MacLaren."

"That can be arranged," Trevor said with a conciliatory smile.

"Now," Gary barked at him.

Trevor shook his head. "Tomorrow. Not tonight. His wife was one of the hostages. They are both shaken up. We're leaving them alone for now."

"Well at least tell us what you're doing that 'pertains to national security' and also when you started using the word pertain," Gary snapped.

Trevor shook his head. "Protocols are protocols, Gary. Can't tell you that. But I can eat lasagna. Is that lasagna I smell?"

###

Trevor and Rene thought they were alone in the living room. In fact, Gary and Patricia had left them alone, gone up to their bedroom to watch a movie. They'd sat uneasily next to each other in bed, barely talking, continually looking at each other with the intention of saying something, though generally staying quiet. But Gary had gone down to the kitchen for ice cream, and happened to be on the landing of the stairs, close enough to hear Rene saying, "I know it's real. You don't have to pretend with me."

His son laughed, his deep, rumbly laugh, saying, "What are you talking about?"

"You're not him. You haven't been for a long time. It's okay though. You're better now. You're kind. He was never kind."

Trevor cleared his throat, saying, "I think you've got the wrong idea."

"Trevor, 115, whoever you are," Rene said, her voice remarkably calm, remarkably even. "You do everything differently now." There was a pause, and Gary wondered what they were doing. "Even that," she said. "You even kiss differently. And we haven't had sex in seven months. Is that because I've gotten super ugly, or is it because you aren't him, and maybe you're really a hundred years old, and you have morals?"

Trevor laughed. "Really drinking the Koolaid, Rene, are you?" he said.

Gary felt his hand tremble. His son had been different lately. Ever since the concussion. That stupid cage fight. What if? But it was crazy.

Rene kept up this line of questioning for a couple more minutes, but Trevor didn't tell her anything, kept denying it all. As they began moving towards the front door, Gary crept into the kitchen. He didn't want Trevor to realize that he'd listened in. He held his breath as his son's girlfriend left their house, as Trevor ran up the stairs and disappeared into his own room, behind his own door. The room where he'd grown up, where he'd slept since he was six months old. This was his son, his only child. He had to be. Otherwise – it was too hard, too much, too everything.


End file.
